Twenty three days into my new life as a non-coffee drinker, I've succumbed - worn down by a succession of 5.30am wake up calls and the need to regain some of the focus that inevitably follows caffeine out of the door.
I'm not bereft, but if I were to spare guilt for such trifles, I'd admit that I'm feeling a little sheepish about it.
As it turns out, I shouldn't beat myself about it. According to
caffeineinformer.com's Death By Caffeine calculator, in order to die from my once-twice daily espressos, I'd need to consume 136.79 shots before I keeled over for good. So at this stage in my decaffeinated career, I'd have only the 135.79 left to go.
But it did get me thinking about a fellow traveller I once met at a Wild Bean Café attached to my local petrol station. I was getting a pre-trip coffee for the road, and was going about my business when the man ahead of me, gave me a knowing wink and gestured to the stack of vento coffee cups beside the self-service dispenser.
"They don't charge for the drink, you know. They charge for the cup." "Meaning?" "I fill this cup with espressos and tell them it's a lattte!" "And how many espressos do you fit in each cup." "Oh, about 18 or 19." "And how often do you pull this trick?" "Once or twice a day usually. I drive a lot..."
I'm usually loath to venture advice to any stranger who doesn't come beseeching it, but on this occasion I couldn't really avoid it: did he realise that he was consuming enough caffeine to give him a heart-attack? No he, didn't - and he sniffed, an went about his wicked ruse somewhat offended by my attempted intervention.
I'm guessing the man was about 40, and weighed around 75kgs.
Which by the reckoning of the Death By Caffeine computer he was just 110 short of the number of espressos that would have meant lights out for ever.
